Answer is very simple, a game intended for casual gaming will make life harder for clans.
If you then add a complete lack of important features - such as decide how much time you want a map to be played, warm up time for cm, etc. - and a real/official AC regular competition, your equation can only give a result. Regarding this last thing, clans have not real reasons to exist on AC as they do not have a real - ladders are pure casuistic - way to compare their skills with others (thus improve and keep playing).
Plus, fresh ideas are taken more as an attack to AC than, at least, a test to see if they are good or bad ideas. Not all ideas are going to be good for the game but, specially in the case of an OpenSource game as AC, they should at least be implemented to see 'what if' instead of not giving them a chance. From my own experience, I've recently tried to give an help to the AC Project with a proposal for the site that intends to generate - at least, supposing it was not going to work well - benefits of more than 100 euros monthly (I estimated 150 euros per month to my contact) and I've got very surprised when I received an answer stating "none of these are worth the work required to action them". Of course, it's not about 'as it is my idea, it's good, why you don't like it?' but I can't believe a project which founds are based on donations and site ads does not even want to give a try to such a proposal with 0 investment, as I'm still freaking when a site master of here told me he don't rely on site statistics/traffic to drive the site. Don't worry anyway, I've no intention on giving names (at least in public).
Last but not least, it seems there is - at least apparently - too much confrontation between dev team (and inside dev team itself) and the overall community. Probably - this is a very personal opinion - due to a lack of communication and leadership from the dev team; all debates seems to be a personal fight for the freedom of Earth and don't really concludes in anything good for the game itself.
Finally, so I hope no one would say I just critic with no proposals, there are some actions I would take if I were PM (Project Manager) of AC:
- Kill zombies. This is kick out any member of the dev team that is not doing/able-to-do their job in the crew; as it will help to take decisions and allocate resources (yes, time is a resource :))
- Give stability to the project. Aka give a near-to-definitive balance to weapons, identify what you want each weapon for and maybe introduce little changes on major releases when there's evidence of a lack of balance
- Reach FPS industry standard features. Team Damage on/off (and even reverse team damage), dedicated server package, server administration tools, more user-friendly UI, box to type password for private servers, and a big large etc. You could even extend this part to 'Reach FPS eSports features standards', f.e. warm up, auto time based side switch, shoutcast view, FPS limits, and another large etc.
- Build a PR (Public Relations) Department. A project needs people dedicated to care about both internal (with other AC communities / related companies) and external (other games, generalist communities, press, etc.) relationships and a voice to trust when public announcements are made
- Make a huge opinion poll. Discover what's worrying your fan base and what they are expecting from the dev team and the game itself, and then act in consequence of course xD
- Make it easier for users to contribute, for example, make a blog section dedicated to clans, so they can post their news to the overall community
- Ease accessibility to the site. As multi-language interface seems to be considered as a taboo subject, I'd ask to enable Facebook Connect as soon as possible
- Give people a reason to stay in your site. I guess this portal is one of the main incomes of the project, more visits (and time in the site) means more incomes for the project
Thats all, hope I have bored ppl enough,
GGz!
If you then add a complete lack of important features - such as decide how much time you want a map to be played, warm up time for cm, etc. - and a real/official AC regular competition, your equation can only give a result. Regarding this last thing, clans have not real reasons to exist on AC as they do not have a real - ladders are pure casuistic - way to compare their skills with others (thus improve and keep playing).
Plus, fresh ideas are taken more as an attack to AC than, at least, a test to see if they are good or bad ideas. Not all ideas are going to be good for the game but, specially in the case of an OpenSource game as AC, they should at least be implemented to see 'what if' instead of not giving them a chance. From my own experience, I've recently tried to give an help to the AC Project with a proposal for the site that intends to generate - at least, supposing it was not going to work well - benefits of more than 100 euros monthly (I estimated 150 euros per month to my contact) and I've got very surprised when I received an answer stating "none of these are worth the work required to action them". Of course, it's not about 'as it is my idea, it's good, why you don't like it?' but I can't believe a project which founds are based on donations and site ads does not even want to give a try to such a proposal with 0 investment, as I'm still freaking when a site master of here told me he don't rely on site statistics/traffic to drive the site. Don't worry anyway, I've no intention on giving names (at least in public).
Last but not least, it seems there is - at least apparently - too much confrontation between dev team (and inside dev team itself) and the overall community. Probably - this is a very personal opinion - due to a lack of communication and leadership from the dev team; all debates seems to be a personal fight for the freedom of Earth and don't really concludes in anything good for the game itself.
Finally, so I hope no one would say I just critic with no proposals, there are some actions I would take if I were PM (Project Manager) of AC:
- Kill zombies. This is kick out any member of the dev team that is not doing/able-to-do their job in the crew; as it will help to take decisions and allocate resources (yes, time is a resource :))
- Give stability to the project. Aka give a near-to-definitive balance to weapons, identify what you want each weapon for and maybe introduce little changes on major releases when there's evidence of a lack of balance
- Reach FPS industry standard features. Team Damage on/off (and even reverse team damage), dedicated server package, server administration tools, more user-friendly UI, box to type password for private servers, and a big large etc. You could even extend this part to 'Reach FPS eSports features standards', f.e. warm up, auto time based side switch, shoutcast view, FPS limits, and another large etc.
- Build a PR (Public Relations) Department. A project needs people dedicated to care about both internal (with other AC communities / related companies) and external (other games, generalist communities, press, etc.) relationships and a voice to trust when public announcements are made
- Make a huge opinion poll. Discover what's worrying your fan base and what they are expecting from the dev team and the game itself, and then act in consequence of course xD
- Make it easier for users to contribute, for example, make a blog section dedicated to clans, so they can post their news to the overall community
- Ease accessibility to the site. As multi-language interface seems to be considered as a taboo subject, I'd ask to enable Facebook Connect as soon as possible
- Give people a reason to stay in your site. I guess this portal is one of the main incomes of the project, more visits (and time in the site) means more incomes for the project
Thats all, hope I have bored ppl enough,
GGz!